Reviews tagging 'Suicide attempt'

Harrow the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir

41 reviews

baileythebeagle04's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional funny mysterious

5.0

What the fuck did I just read. 

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julesfrigault's review against another edition

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adventurous dark mysterious medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.5


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steph_weigle's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional funny mysterious sad medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Plot
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? No

5.0


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lunarlibra's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark emotional funny mysterious reflective sad tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

Love love love. I read through the night so I'm not very coherent rn but as much as I loved GtN, I LOVED HtN!! I plan to reread both before moving on to NtN and will update my review with more coherent thoughts, but one thing: I deeply appreciated the depiction of hallucination and different perceived realities, especially after reading the acknowledgements. Anyway. God what a great book
i love killing(???) God in fiction, even if it doesn't keep

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shottel's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional funny mysterious sad medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Plot
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.75

Like Gideon the Ninth, the book-cover reviews and summaries don’t do it justice. Harrow the Ninth is a fantastic, funny, unique, genre-blurring novel whose worldbuilding and mystery-oriented storytelling makes it worthy of reading on their own. To an even greater degree, it is a poignant picture of psychosis and grief. I was not expecting to see in such detail a broken mind, agonized by self-doubt and the mistrust of others, and the crushing weight of immense loss.

Outside of the deep themes of regret, loss, absence, grief, and psychosis, there is much to say positively. Harrow manages to pull off pop culture references and memes humorously, without making me want to throw the book across the room. (Minimally spoiling example: A subtle joke invoking none pizza left beef.) This, combined with a tamer but still present version of the sense of humor that made Gideon distinctive makes for an enjoyable time. It doesn’t lag so hard in the first half like Gideon does (although I do feel it could’ve likely been shortened a good 50-100 pages). The ending was exciting, the payoff for working through over 400 pages of confusion (albeit a well-written 400 pages) deeply worth it. My only gripe is that, without spoiling anything, the last 5 or so pages are a bit confusing and sad in a way I don’t think fits, but this doesn’t harm it enough for me to say the ending was anything but excellent.

Overall, I would strongly recommend this book to anyone who has read Gideon the Ninth and would be interested in a good mystery or an evocative portrait of disturbed mental faculties.

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jodean's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark emotional funny mysterious reflective sad tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Plot
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0


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alisonvh's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark emotional funny slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Plot
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

I found this book a little harder to follow than the first. It might be because I listened to it on audio rather than reading it. Or it could be because Harrow decided to fuck with the timeline of the first book. I still enjoyed it, especially towards the end, and will definitely be reading the sequel.

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poison_frogs's review against another edition

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challenging funny mysterious tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes

5.0


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provo's review against another edition

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dark emotional funny mysterious tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

I knew before reading this that the plot would not make sense until 2/3 trough, so I was prepared for the confusion.
The finale was something else and bumped my rating from 4 to 5 stars, incredibly satisfying to unwind all the what-the-fuck-is-going-on.
But: check trigger warnings before reading, like there’s a lot of really graphic stuff.
Also maybe not a book anyone should read during an active psychotic episode (this is not a joke).

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possibilityleft's review against another edition

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challenging dark mysterious tense slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0


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